Oklahoma middle school teacher Karen Wunderlich Loewe is going viral this week after posting about a back-to-school class activity that became one of the most emotional days a teaching career spanning two decades.
“I tried a new activity called ‘The Baggage Activity’. I asked the kids what it meant to have baggage and they mostly said it was hurtful stuff you carry around on your shoulders,” she explains in her post.
She had each child write down what was bothering them, crumple up their paper and throw it across the room. The crumpled papers are now hanging in a bag by her classroom door, but before the papers were put in the bag the kids each picked one up and read the message to the class.
“They picked up a piece of paper and took turns reading out loud what their classmate wrote. After a student read a paper, I asked who wrote that, and if they cared to share,” Loewe wrote.
She continues: “Things like suicide, parents in prison, drugs in their family, being left by their parents, death, cancer, losing pets (one said their gerbil died cause it was fat, we giggled

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Everyone knows that our youth are the future, and our society faces considerable challenges that these young people will have to help solve. Therefore, it is in all of our inter...